


The Wake-Up Toast

by romancandles



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-30
Updated: 2011-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:40:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romancandles/pseuds/romancandles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers waking up and seeing the bandages, wondering what the hell he’d been thinking. Spoilers through 116.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wake-Up Toast

When Eric wakes up for the first time After, he’s not really surprised. Or upset. Or anything except confused.

There are bandages on his forearms. He blinks at them for a minute. What is he doing here?

There’s no one else in his room.

He sits alone for a few minutes, staring down at the blanket and piecing his thoughts together. His room seems over bright and kind of antiseptic. He doesn’t look up when the door opens or even when the doctor starts asking him questions in a cheerful voice that fades to officious at Eric’s blank answers.

His wrists itch.

“Look at me, Eric,” the doctor says and Eric looks up but doesn’t see him at all. All he can see is his mother standing next to the wall, like she’s afraid to be too near him. Her eyes are bruised-looking and puffy.

He looks down again because he didn’t mean to make his mom cry.

**

The first thing they make him do in the Ostroff Center is write down, in his own words and handwriting, exactly what happened. What he did, what he said and felt. Everything. The further he gets from the Event, his therapist—“Call me Rebecca,” she says, looking him straight in the eye—tells him, the less clearly he’ll remember it.

Eric gets as far as _It was a dark and stormy night_ before he runs out of steam.

Instead he makes a bulleted list. Went to the bathroom. Turned on the shower. Sat down in the shower. Cut lengthwise down the wrist. Waited.

His therapist reads it in silence before looking up at him. “This is good, Eric,” she says gently, “but we’re really interested your feelings.”

He doesn’t know how to say that he’s not sure he has any.

**

When he sees Serena, a little part of him relaxes, just the tiniest bit. Everything with Serena is bright and uncomplicated—even though Serena is more complicated than he’ll ever be.

He loves Serena, maybe more than anything else, and he’s always known that but still, he’s not really prepared for how much he missed her, for the way her hair smells and tickles his face when he hugs her. But it’s—nice, he decides tentatively, to have Serena sitting on his bed, picking apart a croissant and spreading crispy golden flakes across his blue cotton bedspread, her hair falling messily in her face.

He doesn’t even mind when she spends the whole night talking about how everything went wrong with Blair and some guy new guy, Dan.

What he loves about Serena is how she’ll never change, not really, not for him.

**

When Eric turned thirteen, he spent the night curled in an unforgiving hospital chair while they pumped Serena’s stomach and hooked her up to an IV. Their mom was there, kind of, pacing in and out of the waiting room, on the phone with their dad, speaking in hushed tones or getting watery burned coffee from the mess.

They weren’t alone. There were other pinched, desperate-looking families glancing up hopefully whenever someone passed through. He remembers thinking that this was where you waited around for people to die. Another mother sat directly across from him with a son, a little boy asleep in one of those wrap-around papoose carriers. She never looked up when someone came in, just scratched into a Times crossword with heavy bags under her eyes.

Rebecca nods when he relates this story but doesn’t write anything down. “Do you think about her a lot?”

Eric nods, then processes the question and shakes his head. “No. The baby.”

“Why the baby?”

He pushes a fingernail under his bandages. He doesn’t really remember wanting to die. More like he just wanted to calm down. “I just thought it would be nice to be able to sleep through all that.”

**

The Ostroff Center is big on therapy and it quickly becomes tiresome. Eric has all sorts of therapy these days—individual, family, group. He makes a joke about slitting his wrists in the first place to get away from therapy and ends up getting his computer privileges taken away. It’s hard to decide which kind he hates the most. Each type has its own set of horrible twists, like the way every family session turns into a fight between his mom and Serena, or how he knows he’ll be under close scrutiny for a whole hour (at least) for one-on-one.

In group sessions, he’s always struck by how much more fucked up everyone else is. There’s a girl there that talks about how much she wants to murder her mother every single session and a boy who drives his parents’ limited edition cars into trees on a regular basis just for something to do. After one or two sessions, you sort of feel like you know everything about everyone. It’s like they want nothing more than talk about what’s wrong with them. Eric just wants to get out of here and erase this chapter from his life. Mostly he sits and stares at the floor, a study in disinterest.

Some of the kids in group are outpatients who aren’t around for every session. Eric kind of likes new blood in the mix.

When the circle comes to him, he just shrugs and slouches further into his chair.

**

Rebecca wants to know about their house. She’s less interested in the hotel room. Not the memories and associations he has for it, she wants to know how it’s decorated—so that she can picture the rooms exactly as they are. Were.

Eric’s halfway through describing the twenties-style couch that sits framed by two yawning windows spilling sunlight through translucent white curtains when he realizes that the sitting room’s been redecorated at least twice since then. When he stops and tries to picture the new sitting room, he comes up with an odd mish-mash decorating schemes from over the years.

“I guess I don’t really pay attention to stuff like that,” he says apologetically. “It changes a lot.”

“Your mom likes interior design?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Well, she likes to get the place overhauled.”

“Because it feels like a fresh start?” She’s leading him and he feels defensive instantly.

“Maybe she just likes spending money.” He looks down, swallows. He shouldn’t talk badly about his family to strangers.

“What about you?”

“Do I like spending money?” He tugs on the cuffs of his shirt. They feel too tight.

“Do you want a fresh start?” Her eyes are dark and luminous and the light catches on her braids. Rebecca changes her hair a lot. He likes that about her.

“It’s a little late for that now,” he says. He doesn’t really want anything right now except to not be here.

**

Eric’s never really had friends, exactly. He’s shy and quiet and kind of awkward and he never likes the things other people like. He gets along with most people in a distant kind of way reserved for fancy brunches and cocktail parties but has never had a tight knit group like the one Serena has. So it’s not terribly surprising that he doesn’t immediately fall into a group at Ostroff. There are a couple factions around his age, some of them in rehab for drugs and alcohol, some of them suicide attempts like him, and while they all seem to tolerate him it never goes further.

Eric is sitting cross-legged with his iPod on a nearly rotted through wooden bench in the court yard under one of the sickly, spindly trees that pass for nature, flipping through a rumpled issue of Spin that someone left in the lounge. When someone gingerly sits next to him, Eric doesn’t even look up. It isn’t until he hears a garbled human voice humming under the bass line that he realizes he’s being spoken to.

“What?” He jerks the earpiece out of his ear. Asher’s smiling, kind of tentatively. They’ve spoken a couple times before, in group sessions and over stale sub sandwiches on Saturdays, when Asher’s here for most of the day. Once Eric gave him change for the soda machine.

Asher asks him what he’s listening to and when Eric tells him, Asher gives a noncommittal, blank shrug. His hair is kind of shaggy around the bangs and overlong, curling just a little bit at the back of his neck. They try movies next and that fares a little better since the only plus side of not having any friends is renting a lot of movies. They move to the other kids in group and even though Eric feels kind of bad joking about everyone’s problems, it sort of gives him a weird sense of triumph, like he’s part of something.

They don’t talk about themselves. That would be too weird.

**

There’s a new photograph on Rebecca’s desk and Eric is immediately wary. Eric knows with a knowledge borne of years of therapy that every object in a psychiatrist’s office is carefully chosen. When he was in middle school, he once caught his therapist rearranging his office between sessions to tailor to Eric’s comfort zone.

Rebecca laughs when he informs her of his and says she’s going to change something different about her office every session from now on just to keep him on his toes. They don’t sit on either side of her desk—desks are about boundaries and walls and if Rebecca wants Eric to break down his boundaries, then she can’t have any of her own. She reaches out and flips the frame over. It’s a wedding photo: Rebecca in a simple white gown, arms around a square-jawed man with extremely dark skin and white teeth. She looks tiny next to him.

“They’re finally ready.” Rebecca smiles fondly at the picture. In the picture, they’re locked together, laughing in each other’s arms. It doesn’t look anything like his mother’s stiff wedding portraits.

“When did you get married?” She’s not wearing a ring.

“In June.” She sets the frame back on the desk, this time facing him. "At the Presbyterian Chapel on Fifth,” she says, smoothing down a piece of hair. It’s straight and shining today, pulled away from her face with simple barrettes. “The reception was at the Hudson.” She gives the picture a faraway look, a distant smile on her face.

“The Chapel’s nice,” he offers. “My mother almost got married there once.”

“She changed her mind about the location?”

There’s something about the way she says it, too evenly maybe, and too late he realizes he’s been tricked. A long moment passes before he finally says, “About the groom.”

“But she did end up getting married.” It’s not a question, just confirmation of fact. She’s still not writing anything down, although she does trawl the pen lightly across the notepad.

“Eventually. To someone else.” He shrugs. The light from the window is distracting. It washes out everything it touches.

“Was that difficult?” He must look confused because she clarifies, “Almost having someone new in your family and then not?”

He rubs his forearms together, dropping his gaze. “It doesn’t really to me matter who she marries.”

“It doesn’t matter who becomes a part of your family?”

“They’re not really… part of my family.” It sounds like he’s being a snotty kid, so he rushes to explain. “I mean, it doesn’t usually last long. I didn’t really know Greg that well.” His family has been the three of them for as long as he can remember. A little nuclear group that nothing, not even the passing of multiple marriages and engagements, could touch.

“Greg was… your stepfather, right?” Eric feels the pressure of Rebecca’s gaze. He hates that he doesn’t know what she’s thinking of him, what opinions she’s forming. He feels the need to correct her that he’s not some kind of archetype, the sad kid with daddy issues.

“For a little while.” This is probably Rebecca’s first marriage. Maybe her last. “But he was, like, this big CEO and he was always in Japan or something so we weren’t exactly best friends.” It sounds bad, putting it like that. “But I liked him okay.”

“But you don’t miss him.”

He shrugs. “I’m not really a people person.” He can barely juggle himself, much less anyone else.

**

One day, out of blue, Asher brings up his dad. They’re hanging out on Eric’s bed because it’s raining outside, a dull, steady storm that’s settled over the city with apparently no intention of moving until its rung itself dry. Eric’s propped up at the head, reading, and Asher’s lying on his back across the foot, shuffling through Eric’s playlists. The room has been utterly silent save for the turning of pages for the last thirty minutes. Eric’s always been a solitary creature, either by nature or necessity, but he likes having someone else there more than he thought he would.

The thing is, Asher says something totally banal about being a disappointment—the kind of thing that Eric would normally roll his eyes at, but he finds himself responding without knowing why. “Disappointment how?” he asks and is surprised to realize that he actually wants to know.

Asher rotates his head on the bedspread to look at Eric. Eric’s iPod rests on his chest and he’s pulled out the headphones. “Well the whole mental patient thing isn’t a big winner.” Then he winces because they both know that if anyone in this room is mental patient, it’s Eric. “I mean—you know.”

“Why are you—” he stops and takes a minute to reorganize his thoughts. Asher just waits, as if he has nothing better to do. Maybe he doesn’t. “Why did they make you come here?” Everyone in the Center knows why Eric’s here, but Asher doesn’t have any obvious physical scars or a drug problem. He never has breakdowns in group. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing.” His voice gets higher when he gets defensive, turns into more a practiced drawl. Asher turns his head back to the ceiling. Eric’s wrists start itching but he doesn’t move. “Depression, I guess.” Eric frowns. Most of the Upper East Side is depressed but they’re not all in super secret rehab. “I… may have had a few outbursts,” Asher admits finally. "Possibly semi-violent ones.”

“Oh.”

“I took a lacrosse stick to all the mirrors in my house. And, like, vases.”

“Oh.” Eric doesn’t know what to say to that. It all sounds vaguely Freudian. Or something. “That must have been expensive.” He’s never felt the urge to be violent toward anything—with one notable, obvious exception.

“The thing is,” Asher rolls over and props himself on one arm, “I don’t even know why. One minute I was fine and the next… I don’t even know.” He shakes his head. “And then I couldn’t even remember why I was so mad in the first place.”

“So you’re, like, actually nuts,” Eric surmises. But he remembers waking up and seeing the bandages, wondering what the hell he’d been thinking.

Asher grins a little bit, reaches out and tugs on the bottom seam of Eric’s jeans. “Basically, yeah.”

When Eric opens his mouth, he has no idea that he’s going to say, “I’m not exactly the son my dad wanted either.” He’s pretty sure he was actually going to draw attention to his hunger. Asher’s hand is still by his foot but not touching and it feels weird, like the laughter that bubbles up right before someone tickles you. “I mean I’m not—I’m short and awkward and I hate sports and…” he hates talking about it because it’s like a litany of why every son who isn’t captain of the lacrosse team feels inadequate. Cliché. It seems like that should make it easier because at least he’s not the only one but somehow knowing that other people suck doesn’t make sucking any less depressing. “Well, essentially because I’m not like… you.”

Asher’s watching him very carefully and Eric has no idea what he’s thinking. “Well we’ve both got the crazy thing.”

“There’s always that,” Eric agrees.

**

Family sessions are few and far between but always excruciating and they’re even worse when he has to follow one with a one-on-one session. By the time he’s ensconced in Rebecca’s new papasan chair, he’s completely brittle and thin around the edges. All over, actually. He wishes he were anywhere else, possibly even back in his room, reading the terrible book Asher told him to read. His eyes feel grainy and prickly and his skin is too tight. He tilts the chair so that he perches in it as if it’s a nest and rests his head on the edge of a faux-suede cushion, asking if they can maybe nap instead.

“Worn out?”

He raises his head and stares at her in disbelief. Thick, leather-bound tomes line the dark oak bookshelves and little stress-relief toys dot the edges. He nearly asks for one. “You were there, right?” he asks. He loves his family to death but sometimes he wishes that he could erect a barrier between Serena and their mother. “God, I just want to go home and forget any of this ever happened.”

Rebecca leans forward, eyes dark, and frowning. “You can’t do that, Eric. You can’t ignore this and hope it all goes away.” Going straight from his family into therapy was bad idea. It puts him on edge, makes him much more likely to react or say something too telling.

“I just don’t like making waves.”

“But you’re not making waves,” says Rebecca, unreadable as ever, “you’re trying to beat them back.”

Eric drops his head back on the pillow and takes a deep, loud breath. “Can we not talk about it today? Just for once?” His chest hurts. Maybe he’s having a heart attack.

Rebecca raises an eyebrow but nods slowly. “Okay. What about your friends?” Eric furrows a brow. He’s sure he’s making a completely ridiculous, incredulous face. Surely he’s explained the feeling of oppressive loneliness in the hotel room enough times for that question to be superfluous. “I mean here,” she says when Eric remains stubbornly silent. “How are you fitting in here?”

Eric never quite fits in anywhere for whatever reason. At school he’s too weird and messed up and here he’s not quite screwed up enough. “I guess…” he says, a bubble of uneasiness beginning to rise. “I mean, I know people.” She writes something down, which worries him. “But it’s not like it was,” he says, as if tacking on more words is gong to save him now.

“You mentioned a friend,” Rebecca says mildly. Eric freezes and the question dies right there in his mouth. It’s like the world stops for just a moment and then suddenly rushes ahead to cover up the lapse. It makes him dizzy. “To your mom, you mentioned a friend. A boy?”

There it is, those two words in conjunction with each other. There’s a rushing in Eric’s ears. He’s horrified to feel his eyes start prickling and he stares down into his little nest for a moment. “Yeah, Asher.” He forces himself to look her in the eye. Rebecca’s expression is open and uncomplicated, like they’re talking about the weather. “He’s just a friend.”

She nods, “What else would he be? It’s important, Eric,” she moves along smoothly like this was her plan all along, “that you form friendships here. You need to integrate yourself into the community.” Eric’s eyes dart to the window. He just eats, sleeps, and spends every moment of every miserable day here. How much more integrated can he get? He focuses on his anger to avoid the sinking feeling of dread.

**

Serena shows up one Saturday morning with a guilty expression, a thermos of steaming hot coffee from Eric’s favorite cafe, and a box of chocolate croissants. She basically starts crying in front of the group leader, who lets Eric out for the day on the promise that he’ll actually say more than two words next week. Eric cheerfully agrees, figuring there’s no way they can force him into talking.

It’s only once they’re sitting in the courtyard on a giant swing contraption and Serena smugly says she knows how much he hates group therapy that he realizes that getting out of group means he won’t get to hang out with Asher. It bothers Eric that he even thought about Asher when he’s got Serena right here and he covers by weakly agreeing.

Serena’s being kind of weird and furtive when she pulls paper cups from her giant bag and fills them with coffee. It all becomes clear two seconds later; even Serena’s hair hangs guiltily as she darts a glance around and, seriously, actually pulls out a flask in the middle of a rehab clinic. Eric stares at her when she pours a little bit—hardly any, like a tablespoon, into each cup and then stashes it away. When she catches his look her face changes from guilty excitement to chagrin. “Oh god,” she says, horrified, “I should’ve asked—I just thought it would be a little fun and—Eric,” she says very seriously, on a babbling apologetic roll, “I am so sorry. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. God, I am such an—ugh.” She continues mumbling, mostly talking to herself and he has to shake her to get her to refocus.

He finds himself laughing, reaching for the cup. “Stop, it’s fine. It’s just—you’re crazy, okay?” His sister. You can’t make this stuff up. “Jesus.” The coffee doesn’t taste any different at all.

Serena’s embarrassed and she pushes her hair behind her ear, eyes huge and luminous. “I just don’t feel like I have to try so hard around you, you know?” She blows at a piece of hair and it sticks straight up before the blonde strands flutter back down, glinting in the sun. The rest of it is half pulled back in a tiara around her head.

“You don’t,” he tells her. There’s nothing Serena could do, ever, to make him love her less, even if there have been occasions where he’s wanted to strangle her with all that gilded hair.

She starts telling him about the famous Dan, who Eric met once for like two minutes. He seemed like a nice guy, not that Eric’s the best judge of character. Serena talks about how she even likes studying with Dan at his house and she’s not even using studying as a euphemism. She likes his face, and his hair, his hands, and even his pretentious taste in books and music and the way he acts as though he’s read all the classics on his bookshelf but clearly has not.

Eric catches himself thinking about group and about Asher again and flinches internally. Serena’s liquid brown eyes sparkle as she relates something Dan did and Eric feels the temptation to—something. Return the dish, or whatever, about weird pre-tickle feelings. But as soon as it comes, the idea is swept away by devastating panic and crystallized realization.

He sips his coffee automatically and shakes his bangs into his face, the desire to hide overwhelming. It feels like there’s a fluorescent sign hanging over his head or fireworks or something. But Serena doesn’t notice anything, just continues talking, blissfully unaware.

**

Eric spends the next few days volleying between weirdly giddy and totally terrified. He also, for the first time ever, wants to talk to somebody. Like, all the time. It takes all of his energy not to blurt something out at random, inappropriate times—like at the vending machines with a scary former addict who could probably crush Eric with a bare hand or during group when Leslie Engleman is telling everyone about her parents’ bedroom games for the hundredth time. It’s pushing its way out of him, fighting its way up his esophagus only to be shoved back down at the last second like persistent bile.

Eric isn’t someone who is really good on his feet, not like Serena is. The few times that he’s suddenly wound up in an unexpected argument or on the receiving end of a barrage of verbal abuse, he’s always been mute and helpless to sit and take it. He needs time to think, plan, and collect his thoughts so that he can say it all the way he wants to. But he can’t sit down and think, it’s like there’s no time at all.

When he sees Rebecca, finally, he opens his mouth and everything completely stops. Once he says it, commits, it’s real.

He looks down at his arms, hidden under a long-sleeved shirt. Rebecca waits, tapping her ball-point pen in a gentle spring-rain rhythm on her legal pad. “I feel like they completely abandoned me,” he says finally. He’s surprised her, he can tell from the way her dark eyes glint. She leans forward, almost imperceptibly.

“Your mother and Serena?”

He nods, squinting into the light. There’s something growing over the window, a fledgling vine of some kind creeping up the outside wall, barely peering over the edge of the sill. “Not—before,” he says after a long beat, “I mean, before, yeah, but now. Like I see them and it’s fine but they’re totally not dealing—they’re not ready to deal with me.” It feels like avoidance, both from his family and himself.

“Maybe they’re not,” she replies, which surprises him. “They don’t need to be ready, Eric.” Rebecca always uses his name when she’s imparting some great psychiatric wisdom, as if she suspects he otherwise wouldn’t be paying attention. “The only person who needs to be ready is you.”

He sighs and tries to explain. He doesn’t know if he’s ready, but he knows he’s tired of being here. He’s not going to get more ready than he already is without actually re-entering the world. Eric doesn’t know how much more ready he can be when he’s stuck in the clinic all day.

In the breathing moment, when he’s collecting his thoughts, it bubbles up inside him. “I think I might be—” his wrists itch. He starts again. “I think I might be ready.”

He thinks Rebecca might not buy it and maybe she doesn’t, but she lets it go. She leans back in her chair and the window lights up a fine corona around her head like a halo.

**

After his mother flakes on their deal and Serena flakes out even more by going on a date with Dan freaking Humphrey, Eric sits on his bed completely still and silent before taking out his phone.

For good behavior, he’s allowed to close his door, which Asher takes advantage of by dropping over blazed out of his mind. Eric may or may not be stoned from sheer proximity. Asher’s also drinking from a flask which, again, rehab clinic. Eric declines all offers and they sit on the floor next to bed, staring out the window. The walls in Eric’s room are still totally bare. Other kids slap up posters and stuff, but Eric doesn’t like admitting this is home, at least for now.

Asher’s one of those smokers who talk a lot with his eyes closed, mostly meandering on about his friends and lacrosse practice. He’s also kind of maudlin. Eric takes advantage of the opportunity to study Asher objectively, since he’s pretty sure Asher’s not going to remember this even if he does get caught.

It’s weird to scrutinize someone like this. He’s not sure that he’s ever really been aware of being attracted to someone on more than a passing level before. It had never occurred to him as more than a vague, lurking suspicion in the back of his mind to really gauge the attractiveness of other guys beyond, like, passable and ugly. God, he’s going about this all wrong.

Asher is looking at him with sleepy eyes. His pupils are totally blown, just tiny rings of brown around black pools. “It’s like,” he says slowly and carefully and Eric lets himself breathe again, “no matter what I do, there’s no way, you know, to live up to these insane things… I’m never going to be the one they want and me at the same time.”

It takes Eric a second to parse that sentence but, luckily, Asher doesn’t seem to be in hurry to get anywhere. “You don’t have to,” he says finally, feeling like Rebecca. “I mean, no one else has to live your life—you do.”

Asher shakes his head, a rapid side-to-side motion that he can’t seem to stop once he starts going and his eyes fall closed again. “You don’t get it,” he says. “I have a—reputation. It’s, like, important to them. More important than me.” Eric feels kind of lucky then, to follow in the footsteps of Serena. He can pretty much do anything and everyone will just shrug. He can’t imagine having some sort of good name to live up—or caring enough about what everyone else thought to do so. Probably another added benefit of being an outcast all his life. “What I want.”

“What you want,” Eric echoes when Asher opens his eyes.

“Yeah.” Asher keeps looking at him and says, “Can I… can I see your arms?”

It’s definitely not what he expected Asher to say. Eric pushes off the bed and turns to look Asher in the face. He doesn’t seem to be kidding. In fact, he looks kind of earnest about it. “What?” Because, honestly, Eric’s not sure that he heard correctly.

“Can I see your wrists.” In the clarification, it sounds less like a question. “I know it’s totally fucked.”

Yeah, kind of. Eric drops his gaze down to his arms. He’d put on a long sleeved shirt over his tshirt after his mother had left, too embarrassed and humiliated and angry to even have a reminder of how this was all his own doing to begin with. He’s never openly displayed them before, except for that one fuck you to Blair few weeks ago.

When he pulls the top shirt over his head and turns his arms over, he feels completely exposed. They’re actually mostly healed over, just long yellowed lines and ugly raised scar tissue, but it’s still obvious what they are. They’re the first thing Eric sees in the morning when he gets up and the last thing he sees at night. Usually he dreams about them too. Eric unclenches his fists, extending his fingers, palms up as if in supplication.

Eric doesn’t expect Asher to touch him, but when he does, moving his fingers over the fragile bird-bones in Eric’s wrists, Eric realizes his hands are shaking. Asher is barely touching him and, frankly, Eric’s not even sure Asher can see straight enough to know what he’s looking at. He seems sort of reverent about the whole thing, which is possibly the influence of the drugs.

Eric watches Asher ghost his fingers over the scars, tracing their length along the vein. It’s not erotic or arousing, thank god, because Eric really has no idea what he’d do with that, but it is incredibly, scarily intimate. As if Asher is seeing something more than just an ugly reminder of a huge mistake, like he’s seeing how hopeless, helpless Eric felt. It crashes over him like a wave, or like a series of waves hitting him over and over, the memory of finally being so tired and desperate that he would have done anything to not feel like that any more.

When he jerks away, the moment’s broken, but Eric’s breathing heavily, great gulps of cold air. Asher looks confused and little hurt, as if Eric’s taken away a toy. Asher reaches out for Eric’s hands but he scrambles back, cradling his arms against himself. He can hear his pulse in his ears, feel it against his neck and chest.

He hits the wall and eyes Asher wearily but Asher stays where he is. Eric needs to get out of here so badly.

**

Rebecca makes Eric switch places with her so that the window is at his back and she’s facing it. He sees the little white squares reflected in her eyes. Her face is smooth and unlined, as if she didn’t spend every day listening to sad rich kids tell their sob stories. The braids are back, but they’re elegantly coifed this time into something like a French twist. He feels a little uneasy staring at the wall, but when he mentions it, she tells him that everyone needs to be pulled from their comfort zone at some point.

That rings a little false, considering he’s already practically a prisoner, but he doesn’t bite. He has a goal today. “I want you to talk to my mom,” he says as evenly as he can, hoping this doesn’t get thrown back in his face. He’s kind of in the dog house with the Center for sneaking out.

“Talk to your mom.” Rebecca does this thing where she repeats what he says until he elaborates on his own. Sometimes, he thinks that therapy is all some big scam so that he can hear his own voice.

“I want to go home. And she won’t listen to me. So, please, please, please talk to her.” He hates begging but he will do it if need be. “It’s just…” he squeezes his eyes shut against the bare gray walls. “When I did th—when I slit my wrists, all I wanted to do was feel better. But I didn’t know how. And maybe I still don’t, but I’m not there anymore.” He rubs his thumb along his bare wrist.

“You’re wearing short sleeves today,” she observes.

His face heats up when he flashes back to his reaction to Asher. “Yeah. I mean, they’re still ugly or whatever, but it’s a part of me, I guess.” This happened, he did this—tried to kill himself, even though it sounds too melodramatic when he puts it like that. He can’t pretend it didn’t happen, at least, not to himself.

He guesses he’s going to have to let his mom and Serena do whatever they want.

“You know it might not be different, Eric,” she says finally.

He looks down at his hands, stretches his fingers to the limits and rotates his wrists. The scars bunch up like wrinkly little worms. He’s thought about that empty hotel room, the way his mom and Serena aren’t so different now than the way they’ve been for a long time. He used to think that some day they’d change, wake up and figure it out, but they haven’t yet. They probably won’t. He loves them anyway. “I know. I think I can handle it though.”

**

The funny thing is that it’s actually not Eric who starts it. Asher’s sitting on the edge of Eric’s bed while he’s on the phone with Serena and he’s unashamedly snooping through Eric’s computer, like he’s going to find some sort of secret cache of porn—which is totally what he’s looking for, Eric can tell.

Serena’s squealing because their mother has finally fucking relented, he’ll be home in a week—just in time for Thanksgiving. “Eric,” she says, sounding breathless, “I’m so proud of you.”

“For making it out alive?” he jokes, his voice kind of cracking at the end. Asher looks up curiously from Eric’s computer, reaches over and squeezes Eric’s hand. For a second, Eric completely forgets that he’s on the phone with Serena, he’s so blown away. Then he does and she hasn’t noticed anything, she’s still gushing, sounding sincere. There’s a rushing sound on her end and he can hear honking in the background. He imagines her walking down the street with her hair billowing out behind her like some kind of celebrity. But he doesn’t move his hand.

Asher does, eventually, to click something on Eric’s computer. He’s totally screwing up Eric’s hard-earned FreeCell stats. When Eric hangs up with Serena, there’s a long silence, until finally Asher looks up from his (abysmal, Eric can’t help but notice) game. He’s biting his lip, looking uncertain and he pushes the computer a little away from him.

“So you’re finally free,” he says.

“Kind of, yeah.” Except he’s going to be in therapy until he’s dead. “Finally giving up this palace.” He gestures around the still spare room. It doesn’t look that different than from when he moved in here. He clenches his teeth into kind of a smiling grimace.

“It wasn’t all terrible.” Asher sounds a hurt.

“Even the good parts don’t outweigh the overall terribleness,” Eric tells him. “Plus, just because I’m not actually living here doesn’t mean I won’t practically live here. I have like four hundred sessions scheduled a week and—” Asher kisses him then, right in the middle of a sentence. Eric didn’t think things like that actually happened in real life, the kissing someone in the middle of a mundane conversation with no lead-in.

It’s not a long kiss and it’s pretty chaste considering Eric’s mouth is open for part of it and he doesn’t feel fireworks or sparks fly but he does feel warm all over—probably because he is flushing to his very obvious roots. When Asher pulls back, he’s also red and for a second everything gets awkward. Eric’s extremely aware of the mid-day sun shining through the vertical blinds onto his cornflower bedspread and the fact that anyone could walk in at any moment.

“Was that—that was okay, right?” Asher sounds wholly embarrassed and he’s shrinking away a little bit, like he thinks he might have read this whole situation wrong.

“Um,” Eric clears his throat. “Yeah.” He nods. “That was okay.” Better than okay. Not in an earth-moving, he’s suddenly in love kind of way, but the way that he doesn’t feel like the sky is going to come crashing down. He wants this. It’s okay.

**

“Congratulations,” says Rebecca. Eric raises his eyebrows at the bottle she pulls out from behind her desk. There’s an iridescent silver bow stuck to it, the gaudy kind you put on Christmas gifts when you’re too lazy to tie a real ribbon. “It’s sparkling apple juice,” she informs him. “Not everyone can sneak whiskey in.”

She has two plastic champagne flutes with the snap-on stands. The juice fizzes over onto his fingers when she’s pouring for him. “To your last session.” She raises her glass and then amends, “While you’re living under our roof.” He’ll be back next week. When they toast, the stand on her flute goes clattering to the floor.

“How’s it feel?” she asks. “Everything you thought?” There’s something about the way she says it, like she’s gently teasing him the way a friend might instead of a psychiatrist.

“And more,” he tells her honestly. He’ll be home in three days—or, his home away from home. Or whatever. “I’m a little scared,” he says finally. She sips her juice and he follows suit. It’s a funny combination of sugary sweet and tart. He thinks he might actually like it. “Of seeing it all again for the first time—like, you know, going back to the scene of the crime or something.”

“What do you think will happen?”

He shrugs. “Nothing, probably. But, you know, there’s always the possibility that it might come rushing back.” Just voicing the niggling fear makes it lessen. He relaxes into the cushions of the papasan, settling back more fully.

She regards him thoughtfully and for one terrible second, he thinks he’s blown everything. “Well, I’ll still be here. Waiting,” she says finally. It’s comforting, actually, that there will be a steady force there waiting for him each week. Like something to look forward to, almost—or loathe, depending on his mood.

He stares into the flute, watching little effervescent bubbles rise to the surface and pop with miniscule splashes. “I, um,” he clears his throat loudly. “I think I might be gay.”

Rebecca sits back in her chair. “Okay.” It would be stupid to think she would be surprised—she probably knew before he did—but he’s still glad that she isn’t. It makes it easier, somehow.

“But I don’t want to talk about it now,” he says quickly. “Next week. I just—I wanted to tell someone.” He can’t help the way his voice shakes at the end.

She nods. “Next week. We’ll work on it.”

**

His mom and Serena are both surprised when they show up together on Friday afternoon and all he has is a duffle bag stuffed full of clothes and a backpack. They both hug him at the same time in a totally cheesy movie way and his mom cries on his face a little bit.

When they finally step outside the gates, the air feels a little dirtier, like city grime isn’t allowed past the pristine, secretive doors of the Ostroff Center. The sunlight is bleaching everything a dull winter white and it’s blinding and painful and he hears his heart beat in his ears, a steady reminder of alive, alive, alive.


End file.
